Fairground Teardown Wraps up at Lowell’s Recreation Park

Photo Credit - Bruce Doll, Images of Vision

By Justin Tiemeyer || contributing writer

Neighbors driving by the old fairgrounds at Lowell’s recreation park, since January, have noticed a change. As the weather alternated between a snowy bluster and unseasonable heat, one thing has remained the same: a number of the buildings, associated over the years with the Kent County Youth Fair, have been coming down.

The last time the Kent County Youth Fair was held at Lowell’s Recreation Park was the summer of 2022. The following year, in 2023, the Grand Agricultural Center of West Michigan held a ribbon-cutting ceremony, and the youth fair was welcomed to a new permanent home. The new facility is located off of Cascade Road, just east of Pratt Lake Avenue, in Lowell Charter Township, the former Deer Run Golf Course.

The Kent County Youth Fair has been held at Recreation Park in Lowell for over 80 years, but there have been plans to move it to a different site for nearly a decade. Recreation Park is a tradition, but it is also fairly small, as fairgrounds go. The fair’s previous location sported about 19 acres of usable land compared to its current 140-acre plot. Furthermore, the vast majority of the site sees frequent flooding.

Knowing that the fair would be moving, City of Lowell leadership developed the Lowell Recreation Park Engagement Summary and Design Plan in 2019, which, per the city’s website, boasts “tent and RV camping, a tree-top bridge crossing, a boardwalk over the river, a boat and kayak launch, gardens that act as dual-use for storm water retention, and more.”

Primarily during the month of February 2024, the Kent County Youth Fair demolished approximately twelve structures they owned on the Recreation Park premises. At the conclusion of the teardown, the only remaining buildings will be the King Building, Reath Barn, and the Foreman Building. The Lowell Ledger reached out to a number of board members for the Kent County Youth Fair, but none were available for comment by the time this article was published.

Lowell’s City Manager, Mike Burns, was able to shed some light on the future of Recreation Park. “In the short term, we’re going to grass them,” City Manager Burns said, regarding the fate of the former barn sites, “and possibly utilize the space as an extra practice field.”

As for the long term, even with the existence of the Lowell Recreation Park Engagement Summary and Design Plan, nothing is set in stone. “There’s not a lot of money to do much there right now,” city manager Burns said. “With all of the other projects in the city right now, it is not a priority.”

Neighbors, who have kept abreast of politics in the City of Lowell, know that a number of current projects feature heavily at City Council meetings. There is the city’s Seven-Year Street Improvement Plan, which seeks to repair and replace as many streets as possible, using funds raised as a result of the state’s Marijuana Retailers Excise Tax. At the most recent Council meeting, the City Manager noted that more streets have been resurfaced and repaired in the past four years than in the previous 50, and they have been able to move up the timeline on projects and add more streets, due to excess unbudgeted revenue. There is also Copper Rock’s controversial renovation of the old Rollaway building, which has been unpopular with neighbors living in the old, fun center’s environs. Additionally, Lowell is currently embroiled in a PFAS scare at the city’s former landfill, from 1958 to 1983, on Ware Road. Even if there were public will, the funding for the road projects is non-transferable, as is the attention from the Copper Rock and PFAS issues, not to mention the difficulty of building anything permanent in the floodplain.

City Manager Burns acknowledged the goals of the 2019 Lowell Recreation Park Engagement Summary and Design Plan but clarified that they are long-term goals. In the short term, the city is looking into low and no cost options for use.

One such option was brought up at the Tuesday, January 2, City Council meeting by Assistant City Manager, Rich LaBombard, who explained that the Kent County Youth Fair Dog Project and West Michigan Dog Sports were looking to use the city’s Reath Barn as a temporary location for a year-round dog training facility. The organizations anticipated the negotiation of a monthly fee to be paid to the city for use of the facility, and they would absorb all electric expenses. In exchange, they would secure the interior and outdoor perimeter with a fence, add a washed sand floor covering to make the ground suitable for dog training, and improve the heat source for year-round use.

The city and the Lowell Area Chamber of Commerce are also likely to continue renting out the King Building.

The City Manager has already been approached by one anonymous organization looking to make use of Recreation Park, but they still have a lot of work to do before they are ready for a comprehensive presentation. While it may be saddening to see a fixture of the community go, this fact may offer a kernel of hope. Even if the city cannot muster finances for long-term or permanent plans, there is still the option of innovations coming from other corners of the community.

This March saw the end to the Recreation Park that people of Lowell have known and loved for nearly a century. Though the Kent County Youth Fair, itself, has found a new home in the Grand Agricultural Center of West Michigan on Cascade Road, the future of Recreation Park remains up in the air.